‘Got the fucker,’ said Valentine.
Shaw unlocked the filing cabinet in the incident room and took out John Holt’s file. The wad of scene?of?crime pictures was comprehensive. Holt’s Corsa, interior, exter ior, boot. And a black?and?white shot of the cast taken from his shoes. Slip?ons, like George’s, with a crisscross tread and diamond motif on the heel.
‘Distinctive…’ said Shaw, to himself.
The building was silent, even the drunks in the cells were quiet.
He pulled out the file on the footprint found under the security van by Tom Hadden’s team. A boot, the steel toecap wide, the sole a grid?iron of raised squares, cracked and fissured with age, the imprint of the burnt?in fern, like a signature. Whoever had worn that boot had stood in Ellis’s warm blood.
He re?read Holt’s statement. He’d been on an errand that night, to his daughter’s house, to cut back the magnolia tree that was knocking on his granddaughter’s window. Shaw had seen him finishing the job when they’d called at Blickling Cottages: he recalled the gardener’s jacket, the gloves and the heavy?duty boots. Holt had said the police had just given his kit back from the Corsa.
Shaw went back to Holt’s file. Each car had been given a thorough forensic examination and each had a detailed inventory. Shaw read the one for the Corsa. The list for
He rang Tom Hadden. The CSI senior investigator answered on the second ring. Breathless, the rhythmic thud of a heavy bag.
‘Sorry, Tom — you can talk?’
‘Yeah. There’s a fire out near the houseboats, we’re just checking it out. Some clothing, a shoe perhaps.’
‘Tom. The night the convoy got stuck in the snow. Who took the inventories for the vehicles — specifically Holt’s Corsa?’
Hadden left a beat. ‘Er. Phil Timms. One of my best. Why?’
‘I need to ask him a question — can I ring?’
Hadden gave him a number. Shaw rang. He let it ring ten times, waited a minute, rang again. Third ring it picked up.
‘Hello? Phil Timms.’
The voice was thick, the acoustics muffled, Shaw guessed by bedclothes.
‘It’s DI Shaw, Phil. Look, I’m sorry, Tom gave me the number.’
‘No, no problem. Go on.’
In the background Shaw heard heavy footsteps, a door
‘You did the inventories on the car contents at Ingol Beach?’
‘Right,’ said Timms. ‘That was me.’
‘John Holt’s Corsa. You list a holdall containing gardening kit. What constitutes gardening kit, Phil?’
There was a long silence, and Shaw imagined him sitting on the side of the bed, trying to focus, trying to recall the details of a night a week earlier that seemed like a career ago.
‘Trowel, hand fork, secateurs — you know, junk really. Oh, gloves, gardening gloves.’
Shaw willed himself not to interrupt.
‘A torch — heavy?duty torch. Sorry, sir, I should have listed them. It was just we were looking for bloodstains, anything with blood… and there was nothing like that, nothing.’
First mistake, thought Shaw. He shouldn’t have been looking
‘And boots,’ said Timms, the voice suddenly dead. ‘Steel toecaps, battered. Yup — that’s it, right — boots. I didn’t think. Sorry.’
Shaw winced. The English language’s most overrated word.
‘OK. Can you ring Tom — tell him what happened? They’re on a job right now at Boal Quay. When they can, they need to get over to Old Hunstanton, Blickling Cottages. DS Valentine knows the address — he’s with Tom. If these boots haven’t been destroyed then that’s
‘Sir.’
‘Tell them I’ll get a warrant for Holt’s properties. I’ll meet them there.’
He rang the number for the night?duty judge. Mr Justice Lamprey. A big house, a hobby farm, out on the silt fens at Wiggenhall St Germans, where the river cut under the walls of the old church. He’d be ready in an hour. Shaw needed to bring the paperwork for signature.
Shaw took out his mobile and swore. He’d left it off in his pocket, and when he turned it on it buzzed like a bluebottle. He scrolled to his inbox. He’d missed a message, an hour earlier.
STOP
Just that. He rang the number back and it rang just once before it picked up.
‘’Ello.’ The voice was loud, stressed.
‘Hi. This is DI Peter Shaw, King’s Lynn CID. You rang me an hour ago — I’m sorry, I don’t understand the text you sent.’
‘It’s not my phone,’ said the voice, then he heard a series of bangs as if it had been dropped, then the voice again, out of breath. ‘It’s Giddy’s.’
Giddy Poynter’s phone? ‘Where is he?’ asked Shaw. ‘In the bathroom, but I can’t get the door open.’
‘You’re a friend?’
‘Not really. Flat next door. Did you say police?’
‘We need you. Some bastard’s put glue in the locks on the front doors. I’ve just had the carpenter round to let us out — twenty?eight fucking quid. We looked at Giddy’s and they’d done his too — so the chippy cut his lock out.’
‘OK — look, I’ll pop round. Just stay put. Wallflower House, right?’
Shaw ran down the back stairs and out into the yard to the Land Rover. Wallflower House was on the London Road, a fifties block on blighted ground beyond the city gate; a two?minute drive.
Frederick Armitage, the neighbour, introduced himself. He was wearing a jumper and running pants. He’d be sixty, wiry, the hair a wodge set at an angle, as if he’d just taken his head off the pillow.
‘That’s mine,’ he said, nodding at an open door. ‘This is Giddy’s.’ The door had been thrown back. The flat had a single living room in which Giddy had put one chair — wicker, with a cushion. A footstool lay on its side by the wall. There was nothing else except a TV, flat?screen, a pile of DVD games and a chessboard set on a tea crate.
Armitage took him down a short corridor to the bathroom door.
‘Giddy?’ said Shaw, shaking the handle. He turned to Armitage. ‘What makes you think he’s in there?’
‘We heard him come in. At midnight. It’s always midnight. Then out at three, back at five normally. He fishes at night, down off the Millfleet. Then out at six. That’s Giddy. Clockwork.’
He thudded his fist on the chipboard. ‘Giddy!’
‘He’s not deaf,’ said Armitage, stepping back.
Shaw put his shoulder to the door and the hinges popped, screws lifting almost effortlessly clear of rotten wood. A toilet, the lid down, a washbasin, spotless, a shower unit with the curtain pulled back to reveal tiles in alternate black and white. A window stood open, a fire?escape beyond. He hesitated, just one second, before checking the bath. Spotless, empty.
‘Nowt,’ said Armitage.
As they walked back into the main room the front door creaked, a second hinge working its way loose, so that it began to swing into the room, revealing the hooks on the back.
Giddy was hanging from one of them, a piece of electrical flex round his neck. His toes, in socks, brushed the lino as the wood groaned with the weight. His face was distorted by the broken neck, one side compressed into a
